Grammar and Vocabulary: Tenses, Voice, Reported Speech, Conditionals and Clauses
This domain is tested through transformation and fill-in items: change the voice, convert to reported speech, supply the correct tense or preposition, join with a clause, choose a synonym or idiom. Marks come from small, checkable rules rather than intuition.
Core rules
- Voice: move the object to subject position, keep the tense of 'be', and use the past participle. 'They have cancelled the trip' becomes 'The trip has been cancelled'. With two objects, either can be subject, but the indirect object is more natural.
- Reported speech: backshift the verb (present to past, will to would, can to could), shift time and place words (tomorrow to the next day, here to there), and adjust pronouns to the reporter's viewpoint. If the reporting verb is in the present, do not backshift.
- Conditionals: first uses if plus present with will in the main clause; second uses if plus past with would; third uses if plus past perfect with would have.
- Clauses: a relative clause follows and describes a noun; a noun clause occupies a subject or object slot and can be replaced by 'something'; an adverb clause answers when, where, why or if.
- Word forms: choose by sentence slot, noun, verb, adjective or adverb, then apply spelling rules (happy to happiness, begin to beginning).
Worked example
Direct: 'The teacher said, "I will correct your papers tomorrow."' Steps: reporting verb 'said' has no object, so keep 'said'; will becomes would; your becomes their; tomorrow becomes the next day. Result: 'The teacher said that she would correct their papers the next day.' Each shift is a separate check, which is how you avoid losing the mark for one missed word.
Marks-losing traps
Leaving the participle in the wrong form in passive sentences; forgetting time-word shifts in reported speech; writing 'if he will come' in a first conditional; confusing 'since' with 'for'; and choosing a synonym that fits the dictionary but not the sentence.
Read idioms as fixed units, and learn each with one example sentence.